Head & Heart – February 2015

Well February flew by – unsurprising I suppose, considering it’s such a short month. Still have to make time to pause and reflect on how things are going for Head & Heart :)

“A monthly capture of my feelings and doings, in the raw.”

One Thing for February

Yep, I’m just going to go ahead and chuck my own extra category into my Head & Heart posts this year. As mentioned earlier, this year I’m setting myself One Thing as a goal for each month as my version of resolutions. In February The Boy and I went without meat, which was in fact not as difficult as we had thought. Hot weather lends itself well to simple salads and cold vegetable quiche. Legumes, eggs, cheese and nuts were our friends; mushrooms and eggplants stood in for meat often. I missed meat in dishes I’m used to it being featured in, and The Boy got sick of salad, but we made it through the month without any slip-ups. I think I expected to feel different (carnivorous friends warned I would get tired and slow; vegetarian friends said they felt lighter and more energetic), but I didn’t notice it. We’ve gone back to eating meat in March, but I’m much more mindful of eating less meat, more vegetables and overall much more simply.

I’m grateful for

The great response we’ve had to Issue 1 of Side Project, which is now sold out! We even had some wonderful readers write great testimonials for us, which I am SO grateful for. I really hope we can maintain the enthusiasm for Issue 2!

Owning our own place – there’s been some drilling of holes and upgrading of bathrooms going on lately, and that’s something you just can’t do in a rental property.

I’ve been thinking about

The moments in between. Waiting for the bus, in line at a shop, dentist waiting rooms, making a cup of tea. I used to try to fill those moments with things that give me a false sense of productivity – checking social media, trying to quickly read an email, jotting things down in to-do list apps. But I think that not trying to fill the gaps can give the mind time to wander and be creative, which is probably more valuable than scrolling through Twitter.

More exciting ways to cook vegetarian meals. I’m not sticking with a completely meat free diet, but there are benefits to not eating meat every day which I’d like to keep up. After a month I’m kind of stuck for ideas for vegetarian meals that aren’t too repetitive – any suggestions?

I’m excited for

Emergence Creative Festival, which I will be at by the time this post goes live! I’ve been to conferences relating to tech or to food, but this promises to be more of an ‘un-conference’ spanning many creative disciplines and mixing in some of South-West WA’s awesome food and wine. I really want to look beyond my own industry for inspiration going forward, and this looks like just the place to kick things off. Yay for my job!

Messing around with film photography. It’s expensive, time-consuming and you never really know how things are going to turn out until it’s too late, but there’s definitely something in film that you just can’t get with filters. I’m bringing my old Ricoh along to Emergence and we’ll see how we get along.

What I’ve been doing

Watercolour painting. Okay, just a little bit of dabbling at this point, but it’s so fun! To me it feels a much freer and casual medium than acrylics or oils, which I’ve never gotten the hang of, but still more committal and textural than digital art.

Learning more about magazines, writing and social media at Perth Writers Festival. The three of us in the Side Project team attended a day of talks all about magazines, with speakers from some of my favourites – Kinfolk, Dumbo Feather, Uppercase, Alphabet Family Journal and Smith Journal. It was so cool to hear about others’ experiences starting a publication and making it sustainable.

I’ve been reading

Still struggling through On The Road – why do I do this to myself?

Also a lot of proof-reading and editingSide Project Issue 2, which is much more fun!

I’ve been spending my money on

We had a bit of a splurge on a Fitbit Aria smart scale, after our cheapo Target one kept giving vastly different results each time you stepped off and on (3kg can do a lot to a girl’s self esteem okay?). I don’t think it’s going to magically help me lose weight, but it is consistent in its measurements and syncs via wifi!

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Yay Teresa, congrats on selling out on Issue One – that is mega. So proud of you guys, can’t wait for issue two :)

Have you read The Third Plate? Kate from Netherleigh got me onto that one from memory, I’ve just started reading it and I think you’ll enjoy it – it touches on the whole core of the farm to table story etc…